Legendary economist Esther Duflo received an honorary degree at Williams College at this year's graduation - we were delighted to welcome here at our Center for Development Economics, where @owenozier.bsky.social moderated a discussion with her and our CDE Fellows, thesis students, and faculty.

White people bused to inner-city schools in the 1970's were, as a direct result, more likely to become Democrats. This effect lasted 40+ years! codytuttle.github.io/busing_parti...

i would say that the strongest evidence against AI reasoning is how much they suck at writing stata code despite the documentation being online, because there just isn't as much training data to crib from

In this post in our series on climate and population projections we demonstrate how to generate fertility rates and to project a population using the DHS, a vital data source in many low-and middle-income countries. tech.popdata.org/dhs-research...

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a bit of a height advantage over his fellow honorary degree recipients at Harvard's commencement. #Harvard2025 news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor... www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFIo...

Rest in peace Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

In the most recent issue of @restatjournal.bsky.social (direct.mit.edu/rest/article...), we (Kaspar Wuthrich and @karthik-econ.bsky.social) provide guidance on how to analyze and design experiments with factorial designs (or cross-cuts). A 🧵 below:

Congratulations @frankodhiambo.bsky.social !

The Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Program was central in improving the evidence base for health policies and interventions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central & Southern Asia - figure by @aasli.bsky.social. Our preprint on the termination of the DHS Program: osf.io/preprints/so...

Berkeley PhD to lead Nepal Central Bank #econsky kathmandupost.com/national/202...

Thanks for sharing Konstantin. Here's the paper John: arxiv.org/abs/2405.20604 And a more specific breakdown by topic (comparing 2000-2015 to 2016-2024):

Huge congratulations to @justsand.bsky.social and to Open Philanthropy. The perfect person for a historic challenge

Thanks for having me! This was a fun conversation to have. Hope folks find it helpful. Now I have something to send to anyone who asks me what it's like doing research at the WB!

We wouldn't have some essential everyday things without federal funding for science.

Today's @bostonglobe.com features my thoughts on the recent, rapid rise of private after school math tutoring. TLDR: These classes have been valuable for our kids and others unchallenged by current school offerings, but also likely exacerabte inequality in math. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/05/12/o...

Ever wondered why some charts are more effective and engaging than others? I’ll be going through all the theory, evidence and principles behind compelling data storytelling from this Wednesday. Free to watch for anyone who is interested: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-fundam...

New review paper by Levy and Buchmueller: “The evidence now unequivocally supports the conclusion that health insurance improves health.” www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

a little pick me up lol for the academics in the room

The short article "When health data go dark" about the DHS (Demographic and Health Surveys) is online at BMC Medicine: bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Excited to welcome @daveevansphd.bsky.social back to @cgdev.org. Dave embodies the best of CGD--innovative ideas on the big challenges grounded in data and rigorous research and making practical implementable suggestions.

Check out new work by our great colleague Greg Phelan, joint with alum William Chen! They show that integrating digital currency into the financial system can benefit households, but makes a banking crisis more likely. doi.org/10.1016/j.jf...

What makes one economic outcome fairer than another – and who decides? ⚖️ Should cheap groceries come at the cost of underpaid workers? What IS fair? In a powerful lecture at @uzh_ch, Maya Eden lays out an ethical framework for economic policy. 📺 Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI8C...

I'll be presenting tomorrow at the joint Harvard-MIT Development seminar (2:30 p.m.- 4 p.m.). Friends working on econ or edu in Boston/Cambridge, come over to say hi if you've got nothing else on!

🚨Development Economists!🚨Do you use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS Program) data, which had been supported by USAID? IPUMS ( @ipums.bsky.social ) and the UN Statistics Division have a survey for you. I just filled it out. You can too. #econsky

Last day to submit your papers to LACDEV (Liberal Arts College Development Economics Conference- the nerdiest and chattiest dev conference out there) sites.google.com/site/lacdevc...

Working paper: Software Trends Across Disciplines (evidence from 10,000 papers) arxiv.org/pdf/2504.06507

Important null results in development economics Despite the bias against publishing null results, they are important for policy, helping to kill bad ideas. I've highlighted some key examples we have featured on @voxdev.bsky.social: voxdev.org/topic/import...

This week's links are up a day early - including @owenozier.bsky.social & co on software usage, me on the backstory podcast, funding for research on women-led businesses in LAC, several studies of unanticipated consequences of policies, and more ... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Our new meta-view of statistical software across papers/disciplines (tagging @economeager.bsky.social @czimm-economist.bsky.social @apoorvalal.com @daveevansphd.bsky.social @khoavuumn.bsky.social @evavivalt.bsky.social @bijurao.bsky.social @davidmolitor.bsky.social ) arxiv.org/pdf/2504.06507

@dmckenzie.bsky.social you may get a kick out of our new paper arxiv.org/pdf/2504.06507

Stata? R? Python? Check out our new student activity and paper #econsky ! arxiv.org/pdf/2504.06507

🚨New paper alert!🚨 How do different disciplines use statistical software? We looked at 10,000 papers. We all know a lot of economists use Stata and a lot of statisticians use R. But...

People say Microsoft Excel is unintuitive, but I disagree. Excel does what I expect at least 4-Mar of the time.

🚨 Attention for those who had USAID funding terminated....

📽WATCH #OxCSAE2025 LIVE Follow the Human Capital & Learning session live now at the CSAE Conference 2025. Frank Odhiambo, @leecrawfurd.bsky.social, @nkarachiwalla.bsky.social, Salman Asim View here 👇 ox.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Page...

This is terrifying. She has an H-1B visa.

Lungfish xkcd.com/3064

The Williamstown Pi Day 3.14159265 (give or take) mile run. Economics, classics, alpine skiing, and computer science were all represented

*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...

"The world must now affirm that human lives matter, no matter where they are." -- Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in today's FT.

#EconConf #EconSky It's that time again. Papers by researchers with and without NBER affiliations, by early career scholars, and by researchers from under-represented groups, are welcome. conference.nber.org/confsubmit/b...

Applied microeconomists, esp those studying crime: I am told that thanks to @arnoldventures.bsky.social cosponsoring this conference, funding (transport etc) will be provided for economics of crime related papers. ** Submission deadline this Friday, March 7! ** #econsky

Update on the replication effort #econsky #GDRI_rep

I love that @nber.org live streams conferences now. Spent my morning commute learning about gender and the digital economy. Link on program. thanks J Goldberg, S Caldwell and T Suri for organizing www.nber.org/conferences/...

📣Now hiring: Predoc in Economics and Data Science We are hiring a predoc -- work at ETH Zurich on exciting projects in applied econ (political econ, education, etc.), using AI, NLP, and causal inference. Apply here: econjobmarket.org/positions/11505

Almost no one is prepared for this: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/h...

The current planetary alignment is more of a loose parade (the planets are spread across about 120 degrees of sky). But now is a great time to enjoy bright Jupiter, Mars, and Venus; with a little effort, you can spot naked-eye Saturn & Mercury too. 🔭🧪 www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/s...

Scream Cipher xkcd.com/3054

Writing a talk for a general audience, and having to stop and remind myself to look at this XKCD strip every 10 minutes.

Why Dean Karlan, Chief Economist of USAID resigned yesterday: "I was ready to rebuild from wherever we ended up to identify the most effective programs, figure out how to get them back in place, and to recommend new awards. But I received no response. Zero engagement." www.npr.org/sections/goa...